Episode 70

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Published on:

5th Apr 2025

Navigating Google Ads: John Horn's Expert Tips for Business Growth

Episode 70  Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) Copyright 2025 Prosperous Ventures, LLC

Navigating Google Ads: John Horn's Expert Tips for Business Growth

John Horn, the CEO of StubGroup, joins us today to dive into the world of digital advertising, where he’s made waves helping businesses rake in over half a billion dollars through killer ad campaigns. With StubGroup ranking in the top 1% of Google partners worldwide, John’s insights are straight from the trenches—he's been in the game since the agency's inception over a decade ago. We chat about the crucial role of tracking in advertising, emphasizing that understanding customer actions is key to optimizing campaigns and cutting wasteful spending. John also shares some eye-opening success stories, showcasing how transforming ineffective ad strategies into targeted, effective ones can turn struggling businesses into thriving ones. If you're looking to level up your digital marketing game, this episode is packed with actionable advice and expert know-how you won’t want to miss.

Discover more with our detailed show notes and exclusive content by visiting: https://bit.ly/42xol6H

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Takeaways:

  • John Horn, CEO of StubGroup, emphasized the importance of tracking advertising performance to enhance campaign effectiveness and reduce wasted expenditure.
  • StubGroup has successfully managed over 15,000 campaigns for 2,000 clients, showcasing their expertise in navigating Google Ads complexities and maximizing ad spend.
  • The podcast discussed how businesses transitioning from traditional to digital advertising often struggle to track their success and optimize their spending effectively.
  • John shared insights on how a business can transform by targeting the right services in their ad campaigns, leading to significant revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

Links referenced in this episode:

Companies mentioned in this episode:

  • StubGroup
  • Google


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Transcript
Freddy D:

Today's guest is John Horn, the CEO of StubGroup, a leading digital advertising agency and premier Google partner. Ranked by Google in the top 1% of all partners worldwide for performance and customer care.

Since founding Stub Group, John has helped businesses generate over half a billion dollars in revenue through strategic, high performing ad campaigns across a wide range of industries. B2C, B2B C SaaS, E commerce, retail, local stores and professional services.

StubGroup has worked with over 2,000 clients, managing more than 15,000 campaigns and has become a go to expert for navigating the complexities of Google Ads suspensions. Beyond his agency work, John is also a passionate educator.

He's taught over 100,000 students the INS and outs of digital advertising through online courses. And his YouTube videos produced through Stub Group's channel have earned millions of views from marketers around the world.

When he's not deep in data and campaign strategy, John enjoys unplugging with his wife and two little boys, exploring the great outdoors of the Texas countryside they call home.

Freddy D:

Welcome, John, from the Stub Group to the Business Superfans podcast. How are you this morning, John?

John Horn:

I'm doing fantastic, Frederick, how about you?

Freddy D:

I'm doing outstanding. Beautiful day. It's going to be decent weather today in Arizona finally.

We've been in the 30s, which has been kind of crazy at nighttime, so yeah, a lot of good stuff. So tell me a little bit about what's the backstory of how you started Stub Group?

John Horn:

Yeah, so Stub Group started a little over a decade ago.

It was started by my brother and a long term friend of his and they started the company, they kind of came out of the marketing world different, which I did as well. And at that point they saw this real need in the marketplace for help with the digital advertising space.

Obviously it wasn't new a decade ago, but it was new to a lot of businesses.

A lot of businesses were making that change from traditional media over to digital advertising and needed help figuring out how to do that, how to steward those ad dollars effectively, how to track success and so forth. And so we started Step Group and I came along as employee number one with that idea in mind.

We're going to figure out this digital ad world which those days, still a lot of it is today. Google Ads, meta ads, things like, we're going to figure it out, be really good at it, leverage it for our clients.

We've been doing that ever since, growing our client base, team expertise, and adjusting to the many changes along the way that are being thrown at us.

Freddy D:

Google doesn't stay still two weeks later. It's different. It changes quite rapidly in that aspect. A lot of businesses really don't realize the power of Google AdWords.

When I worked with an interpreting and translation company, they had done zero digital marketing. We got involved in doing some digital marketing with them and I hired an agency. I was basically running the company for a little bit.

That made a huge difference in the visibility of the company and the importance of tracking that data. Unfortunately, that agency didn't do such a good job of that. And how important is really tracking what's going on with your digital marketing?

John Horn:

Tracking is incredibly important. One of the most common mistakes advertisers make is not tracking, not understanding how to do it and not executing on it.

When we say track, we're talking about what is happening. When people engage with our ads and come to our website, which is usually the goal, then what are they doing?

We want to understand the actions we want them to take, whether that be filling out a form, requesting a demo, placing a phone call, whatever action is valuable. We need to track and understand where those actions coming from. On the advertising side, what campaigns, what ads or keywords and so forth.

And that's how an advertiser understands whether or not their advertising is successful. Is this working or not? And then B, that's how we improve upon it. Because not everything in advertising works. Some things work, some don't.

And in order to improve over time, to cut wasted spend, to double down on what's actually driving results for businesses, you have to track those things, measure those things and then be able to improve upon them. The one caveat that I do have to throw in, of course, is that tracking is not perfect.

There are always gaps in tracking, some bigger than others, depending upon things like how long your sales cycle is and things like that.

So both art and science, the science is everything you can track, the art is understanding what you can't track and how to look directionally at where things are going and saying, okay, well even though it's not always perfect, one to one, and the customer journey can have many different touch points across many different channels and places. Still trying to make sure we're going in the right direction with our advertising and marketing.

Freddy D:

Right. So how important and how often should somebody look at the data of what's happening through their marketing aspect?

Combination of Google Ads, which is one of the things you guys specialize in, but other matrix of marketing aspect and then how often do you need to make tweaks and adjustments?

John Horn:

The data is something that should be looked at on a very regular basis. Whether or not you're making changes based upon that data depends upon how much data has been collected and things like sales cycles.

Let's use a couple specific examples. Let's say you're a B2B company and you have a two month sales cycle.

Well, we're not going to know based off of the first month of data really how well things are working because we're not going to see most of those leads that came in at the beginning closing for another month. So we want to be cautious about making massive changes and decisions based upon not having complete data.

Whereas let's say your E Commerce business and people either purchase or they don't today you have a low price point item to impulse purchase. You don't need to wait a month to see how things are going.

You're going to see on a daily basis, potentially certainly on a weekly basis, how things are going and whether or not you need to be making changes. Hey, the conversion rate over here is low. We need to work on this or this campaign over here is not driving traction. We need to cut it.

Test something new sales cycle, factoring that in, just having enough data to make statistically significant decisions. You have 10 clicks on an ad that doesn't really tell me very much.

If I have a hundred clicks I'll have a better sense of the conversion rate or the click through rate or things like that.

Freddy D:

Would you say like once a month review of what's happening with the data?

John Horn:

I hesitate to say a specific time frame because it does depend so much on the scale of the data. So for example, we've got clients spending $10,000 a day and, and we can't evaluate things monthly because there's so much data coming through.

We're in there every day making tweaks, making changes based upon the results. Whereas we have a client who's spending $2,000 a month.

And yeah, they're probably in terms of bigger picture changes would be more on a monthly basis. There may be some smaller things we'll do throughout the month. There'll be things like hey, this is clearly irrelevant traffic.

We need to negative this out through negative keywords because we don't want to pay for that. We should be making those types of optimizations frequently.

But if it's something like hey, which ad is performing better, we're going to need more time, maybe a month to see statistically what is the click through rate over a given period of time. Okay, this ad is winning. It's higher. Let's call that the winner, pause the loser and then test something new.

Freddy D:

Right. That's something that we did with the interpreting company was track different versions of the ad, different service types.

And we found that document translation was the one people were searching for the most. So that's when we tweaked to make that one be the primary that showed up. We did other services, but people found us for document translation.

When we started, that department was under $100,000 a year of document translation. And in one year's time we went from under 100,000 to $225,000 in a year. Primarily because of the Google AdWords marketing we were doing.

John Horn:

That's a great example where I think we see a lot of businesses they will find there's kind of those one or two services or products that are their entry to people either because maybe there's less competition in those areas and so they can stand out better, or there's just more of a market need they're really fitting into.

Well, they'll find those opportunities and then they've got other services they can upsell, cross sell, but they'll kind of find that golden goose or at least the place where they have the most unique value proposition to get people into their funnel in a profitable way based upon what it costs to run those ads.

Freddy D:

Yeah, because people come in and there were sometimes some large companies that needed documents translated in different languages. And once they got in, all of a sudden they says, oh, you guys do audio translation, video translation and interpreters and all that stuff.

And we started providing additional services. So it was a way to bring that in.

Then it's up to the business to present them with all the other services and the customer make a decision as to whether that's going to be beneficial for them or not.

John Horn:

They get that foot in the door.

You may have something where there's nothing that really sets you apart from the rest of the competition, but if you already have a relationship with the client because you've sold them something else now you do have a differentiator. It's very easy for them to just add that on. So you've got the differentiator now.

And so I think that's it's really important, especially for businesses that do a lot of things, whether that be E commerce businesses with lots of products, whether it be lead generation businesses.

It's trying to find those specific services, specific products, where you have an outsized competitive advantage for some reason and then double down on that, extrapolate that as far as you can and have really good processes in place for increasing the revenue and the value of those customers by selling those other products and services to them.

Freddy D:

Right. So John, share with our listeners. If someone brought your agency on, what happens? What's the process? Because they're unhappy.

There's a lot of people that like we mentioned earlier, had a service but they don't get the reports. You have no idea. And they're paying this thing and you're going, I have no idea what's going on. What am I paying for?

So let's talk about how you guys really solve that and your whole process.

John Horn:

Yeah, I would say there are two primary categories of businesses who reach out to us. There are businesses who kind of fall in the category you just mentioned.

They've been doing advertising but for some reason they want to switch who's managing that. They could be bad experience with an agency or a team member managing it.

It could be, hey, they just need to scale and grow and they don't think the current people managing it can do that or fill in the blank. There's many different reasons.

And so in those cases, the first thing we do is we do a very detailed analysis of where are they at right now, what has been working with their advertising, what hasn't been working. If there are aspects of what they've been doing that are working well, great, let's continue that and build upon that.

And then obviously the aspects that are just wasted spend, let's stop doing that. We'll go through that and then rebuild as needed as part of rebuilding, doing things like working on tracking, making sure tracking is correct.

It's very rare that we take over an account and tracking is correct. There are usually problems. Even if something's been set up.

It could be they're double counting things and they think they have twice as many conversions as they did or they're not tracking phone calls and so they're missing out on all this value coming through from the phone.

So initially it's about fixing the problems, getting that tracking set up comprehensively and then getting our action plan, build out the campaigns that we think they should be running and then iterating on that, saying okay, what's the initial performance look like? Great, let's make changes based upon what's working well, what's not working well.

I have very clear communication with the client about what we're doing, what we're seeing and kind of move on from there. The second category would be businesses who have never done advertising before.

Either they're a brand new business or they just haven't done digital advertising. In those cases, there's not existing work to audit. So there we are creating an action plan for them from scratch.

We're doing research into understanding what does their market look like.

We're talking with them about their services, their products, what is most popular, where do they have the best competitive advantages, kind of choosing where we're going to start with them. From an advertising perspective, a lot of that kind of starting is about honing down.

Hey, we do all these things, but I don't want to throw tons of money out of the gate. I want to go with the lowest. Hanging fruit, what's already your bestseller most popular product. Great, let's start with that.

Because if we can't make that work, it's probably be unlikely we can make other things work. So let's start with that, get that working really well, and then we can scale and expand from there.

We do that research, build out the campaigns, create the ads, make sure the landing pages, we're saying traffic to look good, so forth and so on, launch and start collecting that data and start iterating upon what we're collecting.

Freddy D:

Very cool. That's important really, to just understand what the customer is looking for, their information, what products they've got, what it's selling.

So you're hitting all the right points there because then you can put together something that makes sense and then you can develop a budget and then you start tracking. And then once people start seeing the results, then all of a sudden it goes, wow, this is a great investment.

Because I've had customers that I've talked to that done some digital marketing in the past and they were like, well, what's this going to get me?

You're asking for thousand, $2,000 a month and they have especially somebody new, it's hard for them to really put a tangible on that because it's an intangible really initially, until you become a tangible with all the data that you're creating.

John Horn:

Yes, it is difficult for those businesses that are brand new to it to really understand what's going to happen because it's also difficult for us to project because every business is unique, every market is unique.

Even if we're working right now with a business that's fairly similar to your business, your market could be completely different, competition levels, different expectations, needs, et cetera.

We have to be very careful when we are speaking with businesses during that sales process before we start working together to try to set realistic expectation of, hey, this is going to take time. There's no guarantees of what's going to happen because we don't know.

We're going to set things up as best as possible for success and we're going to communicate clearly to you along the way.

But there's always a significant factor of unknown until like you said, you actually collect that data and then start establishing some benchmarks and getting a feel for what it's going to look like for that unique business.

Freddy D:

So can you share a story with this giant company that you worked with and they become your super fans because you've transformed that business?

John Horn:

been working with them since:

When we started working with them, they were a very small company. They're in kind of the B2B and B2 government space.

They sell physical products that they create high price point products and they were a very small company. Our point of contact was the owner. We were working with the owner directly.

The owner was getting on phone calls when sales calls would come in and started with Google Ads for them. Google Ads continues to be the primary channel we've used for them over the years. Have grown them significantly year by year.

w I think they're on the Inc.:

Certainly we can't take all the credit for that. We've been able to help fuel that growth because they've done a really good job of building a good business.

But they have a great product, great reputation, great great sales team. They treat their customers very well. They're very honest with their customers. We have a fantastic reputation and product to work with.

There's a real need for that product.

We're able to pour fuel in that fire through our advertising to make sure that everybody looking for this type of product finds them and gets to their website and sees them as good option. We remarket to them, follow them around, things like that.

It's been really fun to see them grow along the way and get to the point where the owner is not on sales calls anymore. They've got a whole great team build out but they're still doing great work for their customers.

Freddy D:

he years. That's a long time.:

John Horn:

Yeah, it's kind of crazy. And obviously Google Ads has changed a lot during that time period.

The types of campaigns that we run the types of strategies has evolved over time and also even the strategies and the business side of things. So initially it was fully lead generation, taking calls and forms from people and then working with them and selling things.

And then they added on top of that an E commerce aspect where people can actually purchase products directly through the website that calls for different types of campaigns and strategies. And now we have a meld where there's both the lead gen aspect and the e commerce aspect.

And so we're trying to get the right people to the right place, make sure they have the right options in front of them, and then make sure that we're handling that budget as efficiently as possible while still helping them keep growing at a very rapid rate.

Freddy D:

So, okay, what's an ideal customer for you guys?

John Horn:

An ideal customer is a business that's fairly well established and has some track record understanding how advertising works. That's not to say that we don't work with lots of startups, small businesses, etc. We do.

A lot of the really ideal clients are serious about things that kind of got a proven service, proven business model, they've got some reputation built up and we can come on board, put fuel in that fire and help take them to the next level through strategic advertising.

And sometimes we can save them a lot of money by cutting waste of what they've been spending through other agencies or in house team members from like an ad spend level? We work with a very wide variety. When I'm talking about our ideal client, I'll often say somewhere in the $10,000 to $70,000 of ad spend per month.

We also, again, we work with lots of people who are spending way less than that and people are spending way more. It's a pretty varied customer base that we get to work with.

Freddy D:

Okay, can you share a story where you took over a rat's nest, for lack of a better way of wording it, but probably an accurate way where you took over an account because it was a mess. What's the story of what you guys did to get that account turned around and transform them into a super fan of you guys?

Because they were not getting any results and now they are getting results.

John Horn:

Yeah, store that comes to mind to be a moving company in California that we are working with currently, have been working with for a while now. When they came to us, they were spending a lot of money on Google Ads and weren't seeing a good return coming from that.

They had the perspective of we're bleeding a we don't have enough business coming in. But then also we're spending a bunch of money on advertising. Help us.

And so what we were able to do to identify is there was a dramatic amount of wasted spend going on. All sorts of different keywords looked somewhat relevant sometimes to what they were going after.

But when we actually dug into the search terms that Google was matching to those keywords, which is what they're actually spending money for, the actual searches people type into Google, we just saw all sorts of waste. For example, people were searching for like freight forwarding services and they were spending a lot of money on that. They don't do that.

They're a local and interstate moving company. They help move residential homes. They have nothing to do with freight forwarding.

But because of the keywords they were targeting, and because people don't really read ads and just click on whatever comes up at the top, they were spending a bunch of money for this completely irrelevant traffic.

And so what we've done with them is they're spending a lot less now than when they came to us because we cut all of that waste and refocused on relevant keywords. Very tight strategy of what they're trying to orient towards, which is a combination of local moving as well as some interstate moving.

And they've seen some record months in terms of business coming in, while at the same time spending a lot less money in advertising. So that's been a lot of fun to see grow over time.

Freddy D:

So you say those guys are super fans of what you guys have done for them?

John Horn:

They are. The owner there actually made a video about his experience with us that we could use in some of our marketing advertising.

Just saying what we did and the impact it's had on his business because he's been so pleased with the results.

Freddy D:

And that's really the best marketing.

You've got customers that are now promoting, and that's why I call them business superfans, because now they're promoting your business so you don't have to actually sell. You just play a bunch of videos of saying, there's a customer, there's a customer, and there's a customer. No, now selling manufacturing software.

Back in the day, that was one of my sales approaches. All my customers were referenceable.

We didn't have videos back then, but I would take my smartphone and I turn around, says, okay, here's my daytimer, here's all my customers. Take my smartphone, John, and call anyone. Pick anyone you want and call them.

I'd close the deal because it was a ballsy move, but it was a powerful Move. Because all my customers were referenceable and that was my salesforce. And actually they were in turn turning me on to additional customers.

Once you really do a good job and you've transformed them into what I call business super fans, they're happy to give you work because what you've done.

John Horn:

For them, that word of mouth, that personal reference, the North Star from my perspective, and I say that even as an advertiser because my focus is on advertising, putting fuel on fires.

But what I want to happen with those clients that are coming in from those ads is in exactly like you said, to become those super fans and then to create the referral network, the content that we can use in our advertising, saying, don't take our word for it, take our client's word for it. Here's them on video, here's their written review. You don't have to trust us. That's so important.

Freddy D:

I think it's a third party endorsement or the new term is social proof. Once you have social proof, that's hard to deny because that propels additional growth. I wrote my book.

Once you get that rolling, it's an unstoppable machine because everybody's happy to promote you and you've got the employees, suppliers, customers, business partners, they're all saying this is a great agency, great service, and that just snowballs.

John Horn:

Yeah. And it's very fulfilling to see that happen.

I mean, it's good for the numbers, but it's also just good for enjoying being in business and saying, hey, I can sleep well at night knowing that I'm doing right by my clients and that they are happy enough with their relationship to put their credibility on the line and refer other people to me and put their name behind me as well.

Freddy D:

Yeah. So that's how you guys have been scaling.

John Horn:

Absolutely. Yes. That's an important part of how we grow over time is generating those networks, that word of mouth and then leveraging.

I think we have 150 plus 5 star reviews now on our website.

So whenever someone comes to our website, we just say, hey, go here and read as much as they want of people saying exactly what their experience with us was like using their own words that are probably going to speak better to the situation of the person looking at the website than any words we come up with on our own.

Freddy D:

Yeah. So speaking of that, how important is having your Google business page set up properly?

Because I think a lot of businesses set it up, but they don't really leverage it. They get it up there and okay, I've got one.

I Got a business Google page, but really there's ways that you can really leverage that to maximize your business exposure. So can you share a little bit about that?

John Horn:

I'm glad you brought that up. It's very important and vital for local businesses.

That Google business profile page is a massive ranking factor in Google actually showing YouTube people. And so you need to be making sure it's accurate, it's up to date.

You need to be collecting reviews on it because Google loves featuring those reviews.

And so when someone goes and searches for your company reviews, which most of us do, we want to know who we're working with, those reviews from Google are going to show up. If you've got good reviews there, as many as possible. And also if you're responding to those reviews, that's really important.

When you respond to reviews, good or the bad, when you get a bad review, which it happens there, sometimes they have a legitimate bad experience, sometimes they had a bad day.

When you respond to a negative review in a very professional, courteous way, addressing things but not yelling at them, just approaching things in a professional way that goes a very long way towards someone deciding you're a good place to work with because they see how you handle that. And then conversely, when you have good reviews and you're responding to them, hey, thanks so much. Glad you had a good experience.

Things like that shows the people who are researching you that you're on top of things. You're quickly responding to reviews, you're present. Their physical location doesn't really matter necessarily to the people they're working with.

There's still a lot of value in that Google business profile, again, especially on that reviews side of things. Stub group. We're a national company. Our physical location doesn't really matter.

But when people go and look for reviews for us, they first thing they see is those Google business profile reviews. And so those are crucial in creating our reputation online.

Freddy D:

Well, yeah, I mean, just think about it.

If you're going out to dinner, driving along with your significant other, the next thing you do is you look at the reviews of the place and go, no, not going to go to that place. And we pick the ones that's got the most reviews and the most five stars. And that's where we go when we're.

John Horn:

Traveling with my wife and it's like, okay, we need to find a hotel. What's the first thing to do? Hotels near me.

And then look at those reviews, some negatives for each one, but I'm also looking, how do they respond if it's like, oh, it's a terrible experience. And I see a really professional response, sorry about this, here's what we've done to fix it or whatever, okay, I'll give them a second chance.

Whereas there might be another hotel that has maybe fewer negative reviews, but those haven't been dealt with or responded to. I'm probably even less likely to go there because I'm not sure if they're really on top of things.

Freddy D:

You bring a very important point because you can do all the marketing, you can do all the great at Google AdWords, you can drive the traffic to the business, but if it's not handling it properly, been in sales for so long that you've got 15 minutes to respond to an inquiry in today's world. And beyond that, they're going to go somewhere else. You guys can do a phenomenal job.

And I'm bringing this up because it's important, because you can do your part of the equation, which is get the traffic to the business, get the phone ringing, get the forms filled out. But if the ball gets dropped at that point, it's not a reflection on you guys, it's actually a reflection on the business.

And you can do all the things correctly. They can still fail because they don't take the ownership of doing what they.

John Horn:

Need to be doing 100%.

And for that reason too, we as an agency, we have to be very much in the weeds with our clients understanding what is happening, what they aren't doing.

Because even though in the situation you described we're doing everything we can, the advertising usually is what gets blamed first when things aren't going well.

Freddy D:

No, that's why, that's why I bring it up, because I been down that road and trying to bring up a reality that often gets overlooked. That's the fact that you've got a responsibility as the business to do your.

John Horn:

Job in the equation 100%. And businesses, they're super busy.

Often the reason things aren't getting responded to quickly or things are falling through the cracks is because there's so much going on, there aren't the right processes in place. And I think a lot of good agencies in house people can help mitigate those problems by helping them find those issues.

For example, we do call tracking for the majority of our clients, so we know what happens after someone clicks our ad and they call, we have the recording.

So if our client isn't answering the phone or if they've got a grumpy receptionist that's turning away business, we tell them, hey, here's what's going on. The reason the campaigns aren't working is not because people aren't calling. It's because they're not being handled properly.

Here's some ideas and recommendations for how you can handle it.

I think agencies, advertisers who are really invested in their clients and have a good partnership are going to think in that way and go beyond the ad, beyond, hey, we got people to your website and try and help businesses help themselves to do the right things with that traffic and with those leads that are coming in.

Freddy D:

That's really important point that you bring up because a lot of agencies don't do that. It's like, hey, we did our job. We got you the traffic. You're not converting it. That's on you. We're doing our stuff.

So you're going one step above and that's how you're creating the super fans, because you're saying, okay, you've got an issue in this particular area. One of the things I talk about is the energy in a company, as you said.

You've got the receptionist that's grumpy because she's not happy about her work environment or whatever is going on in her life that transcends across and people can feel it. You get that feeling, not sure about this place where someone answers the phone, says, hey, John, great, you reached out. We got your inquiry.

We're so happy. What can we do to help? You're going like, oh, this is a cool place. All that comes into play.

John Horn:

Absolutely. And I've been guilty of this as well.

I'm always having to remind myself of this, which is, as business owners, marketers, we have our perception of what our business is. We know how much work goes in behind the scenes, we know the work that we're doing, but that's not what the customer sees.

The customer sees the person who picks up the phone. They see the information on our website, they see the email that goes out.

And so it's really easy for us to know we're doing a really good job for our client or customer. But if we don't communicate that, then perception is reality. The client doesn't know that.

It doesn't matter how good a job we're doing because they have a perception they're going to make other changes.

Freddy D:

And yeah, I have a saying, an individual's perception is their own reality and you ain't going to change it.

John Horn:

Absolutely.

And recognizing that and training our team members to understand that when they communicate with clients and trying to get to the root of so many issues, whether it be internally or between agencies and companies or whatever. It comes down to communication.

Sometimes it is the actual data, performance is bad, whatever, but often it's just the communication about that and misunderstanding between parties, whether that be misunderstanding what the goals are, what the data actually is, what the narrative is.

If you can really nail that communication, that's where you can generate those business super fans and also get the buy in for patience again where, hey, it's going to take some time for you to see the results you want to see.

But if we've got a really good communication with you, so you know what we're doing, we're working hard on it, you know how things are changing over time, you're going to have the patience to wait for us to get to the place where we're driving the results that you want to see.

Freddy D:

Oh, absolutely.

Because one of the things that I think annoys a lot of people is not knowing when you don't know what's going on and there's no bi directional communication. Our mind unfortunately doesn't go in a positive direction.

It goes into a negative mindset and then you fabricate a multitude of delusional ideas by what you guys are talking about is maintaining a good communication that alleviates all that stuff because the left hand knows what the right hand's doing and the left foot and the right foot are all in communication. So you're all going in one direction and that changes the whole dynamics of the relationship.

John Horn:

Absolutely. I can't say it better than that.

Freddy D:

Well John, as we kind of wrap up here, great conversation, great insights on what you guys do and more importantly, some insights on what takes place involved with Google Ads and the importance of having a Google business page. How can people find you two places?

John Horn:

The stubgroup.com, best place to see more information about us and reach out if you're looking for help. And then Also on our YouTube channel, we put out a lot of free content just to help businesses in the marketing advertising space.

Just search stub group on YouTube and you'll find that channel there.

Freddy D:

Okay. We'll definitely put that into the show. Notes for our listeners and then you have anything for our audience.

John Horn:

Yes. So we love to do a free consultation for businesses. Whether you are currently running advertising or you're brand new to it.

We'll either take a look at what you've got right now and tell you the good, the bad and the ugly with no obligation but saying here's opportunities to improve or here's where you're doing really well, or if you're just thinking about getting into things, we can help put an action plan together for you and do some projections and ideas and give you a sense for what it might cost, what it might look like to start advertising online.

Freddy D:

So, John, thank you very much for being on the Business Superfans podcast show. Great conversation and we definitely look forward to having you on the show again down the road.

John Horn:

Thanks so much for having me, Frederick. Really enjoyed it.

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Thank you for considering a contribution to the Business Superfans Podcast! Your generosity fuels our mission to inspire and empower entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and business owners like you. Every dollar helps us bring on incredible guests who share not only actionable strategies for creating superfans through Total Experience (TX) but also insights to accelerate business growth and achieve sustainable success.

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About the Podcast

Business Superfans Podcast
The premiThe premier business growth experts podcast revealing proven frameworks to transform stakeholders into devoted brand advocates—delivering sustainable growth through strategic advocacy.
The Business Superfans Podcast delivers actionable growth strategies from elite business leaders and SaaS innovators. Host Frederick Dudek (Freddy D), bestselling author of 'Creating Business Superfans®' and Chief Superfans Strategist with 35+ years of expertise, extracts tactical frameworks that transform ordinary stakeholders into passionate brand advocates.

Each episode unveils proprietary systems through conversations with diverse experts—from growth strategists and marketing leaders to sales directors, HR experts, financial strategists, technology innovators, and customer experience designers. You'll discover proven frameworks for customer acquisition, talent development, profit optimization, AI implementation, and loyalty programming that deliver both immediate wins and sustainable growth. New episodes drop every Wednesday and Saturday.

Subscribe now to receive expert interviews and implementation blueprints designed for CEOs, founders, sales directors, and marketing leaders ready to accelerate business growth through the power of strategic advocacy. Don't miss a single growth-accelerating insight—hit that subscribe button today!
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About your host

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Frederick Dudek

Frederick Dudek, author of the book "Creating Business Superfans," and host of the Business Superfans Podcast. He is an accomplished sales and marketing executive with over 30 years of experience in achieving remarkable sales performance results in global business markets. With a successful track record in the software-as-a-service industry and others. Frederick brings expertise and insight to help businesses thrive., he shares invaluable knowledge and strategies to create brand advocates, which he calls business superfans, who propel organizations toward long-term success.


Born in rural France, Frederick spent summers on his grandfather’s vineyard in France, where he developed a love for French wine. As a youth, he showed a strong aptitude for engineering and competed in drafting and design competitions. After winning numerous engineering awards, he became a draftsman working on numerous automotive projects. He was selected to design the spot weld guns for the 1982 Ford Escort car. That led to Frederick joining the emerging computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) industry, in which he quickly climbed the ranks.

While working for a CAD/CAM company as an application engineer, an opportunity presented itself that enabled Frederick to transition into sales. It was the right decision, and he never looked back. In the thirty-plus years Frederick has been selling, he has earned a reputation as the go-to guy for small companies that want to expand their business domestically or internationally. This role has allowed him to travel to over thirty countries and counting. When abroad, Frederick’s favorite pastime is to go exploring for hours, not to mention enjoying some of the local cuisine and fine wines.

Frederick is a former runner and athlete. Today, you can find him hiking various trails with his significant other, Kiley Kaplan. When not writing, selling, speaking, or exploring, he is cooking or building things. The next thing on Frederick’s bucket list is learning to sail and to continue the exploration of countries and their unique cultures.